


what the heart wants

by dream_thief



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s15e18 Despair, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, They both deserve better okay, angsty but will have a happy ending, dean fails to deal with his feelings as usual, hang in there friends, sam talks some sense, we're fixing everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27633734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dream_thief/pseuds/dream_thief
Summary: —'I love you.'—He doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.(post 15x18 coda that carries past 15x20)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this started with me suddenly becoming re-invested in this show and having a lot of feelings about That Scene and Jensen's post-episode comments but now apparently we're rewriting the last two episodes so strap urselves in i guess??

He doesn’t know how much time has passed by the time he stumbles to his feet. His limbs are cramped and painful from being tensed for so long, hands trembling from being caged around his face. He doesn’t have to touch his face to feel the stick of dried tears. His stomach churns. 

His best friend is dead. Dead by choice; dead because of him, no less.

_I love you._

Fuck.

His phone buzzes insistently on the floor from where he had thrown against the wall on its third ring. He picks it up, thumbing away a piece of broken glass. ‘Sam?’ His voice is a hoarse rasp and he clears his throat, scrubs a hand over his mouth.

‘Dean? I was worried. You alright?’

He isn’t sure he’ll ever be alright again. ‘I- where are you?’

‘We’re on our way back to the bunker, should be there in an hour or so. How did you and Cas-’

Dean feels bile rise in his throat and manages to choke out ‘Sure, I’ll see you then,’ hurriedly hanging up. He leans against the doorway and finds himself staring at the spot where Cas had been standing, face set in horrible peaceful acceptance.

_I love you._

He doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

He’s heard the words come out of Cas’s mouth before, always in what he thought were his last moments. He’d told Dean and Sam that they were his family, that he loved them. Once he’d stared into Dean’s face as he said it, eyes fierce, and Dean wondered if … but this is different. It’s laying the quiet space between them bare, putting into words the thing that Dean had accepted was never going to be acknowledged. It feels like he’s broken an unspoken rule, pressed a reset button on everything they understood about each other.

And Dean is left here to deal with it, alone.

He isn’t under any particular illusion: he knows their relationship has never been quite…normal. He used to put it down to Castiel’s complete ignorance of human customs; at least that would explain the long stares that seemed to strip him down to his soul; the soft touches when Cas shared his grace; the sudden, inexplicable loyalty to _Dean_ , a complete mess of a human being. What he couldn’t explain was his own reaction. His inability to move away, the weird energy that seemed to crackle between them when they were alone. He dealt with it by turning it into a joke, would roll his eyes and complain, ignoring the way that it sometimes made his heart flip and sent a flush down his neck. He knows that Cas isn’t this way with Sam. He has seen his brother’s little knowing looks, usually full of amusement, then sometimes something much worse; something soft and understanding, even sad, that makes Dean feel unsettled.

But Cas is… Cas. A literal angel, whose friendship is something that Dean still doesn’t understand, years and years on. He used to lie awake at night questioning it: why _him_. In some ways he would understand more if it was Sam that had been chosen, his gentle little brother, who had made plenty of mistakes but had always been a fundamentally good, selfless, kind person. Instead, Cas rebelled for Dean. An angry, messy alcoholic who was more comfortable pulling the trigger of a gun than being an actual human being. And in return for Castiel’s loyalty, Dean has done nothing but hurt him, cut him out of their lives, froze out his efforts to be close with him even though it made his chest ache each time. But it’s better this way, he’s always told himself. He and Sam are better off by themselves, unable to hurt anyone around them. And Castiel, for all his mess-ups, deserves better than whatever he has to offer.

Whatever it is that has somehow made Cas stick around, though, is something that Dean puts off examining too closely. He’s an ancient being who has been present for the earth’s history, has seen actual miracles and magic and wonders. Whatever his time with Dean and his brother means, it’s a blip in his life; one filled with blood and betrayals and loss. If he does love them—him—it has to be an incomprehensible, self-sacrificial sort of love, between an angel and the humans he has sworn to protect. Dean has spent enough time with angels to know that their concept of emotions is light years away from anything mortal. It certainly doesn’t extend to Dean’s scrambled idea of love; an image that is now far from his old dreams of a family and a white-picket fence, simplified to dinners and old movies and having the same person to come home to and wrap himself up with each night. How could a being that can turn off their need for food or sleep at will possibly be consumed by what humans call love, with all its messy feelings and misunderstandings?

 _Maybe this one can, now that you’ve messed him up past all point of recognition,_ his mind answers, unbidden. It’s true. He pictures Castiel on the night that they met, a terrifying figure who sparked with alien power and spun Dean’s world on its axis with his every word. That Castiel had no concept of love beyond the one inscribed into him by God’s word, had no thoughts beyond those he was directed to have. Now, while still technically an angel, Cas loves lots of things. Jack, coffee, books, burgers. (Dean?) Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that he’s still an otherworldly being; especially during late nights at the bunker, the remains of a pizza between them, his smiles tired but wide and crow’s feet crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he looks at Dean. As much as he prefers this Cas, the fact that he is responsible for this transformation sits uneasily in the pit of Dean’s stomach. They have dragged him down from Heaven and tore away at his angelic-ness bit by bit, until he bleeds and cries just like the rest of them.

 _Did,_ Dean remembers, the reminder a cold stab to his stomach. He _did_ bleed and cry, emptied out his heart through a sheen of tears that made Dean freeze in panic, and then he was gone, forever.

And Dean said nothing in return.

-

Of course, he can’t put off telling Sam and Jack forever.

All too soon, he hears the door of the bunker open, his brother shouting his name. Dean leaves the door to the room open for some reason, as if Cas might just re-appear moments later and come striding through, expression grim, with some wild explanation for his return. It had happened before. But not this time. _It will take me, forever,_ he had said.

The vice that had formed around his chest and the hot spike of tears have faded, leaving something hollow and empty. He wonders if it will ever go away.

Sam knows the moment that he sees him, stops dead when Dean appears in the doorway. He wonders what he looks like, if his face is as wrecked as he feels.

‘Dean?’

There is a long pause, and Dean feels sick again as he sees both men peer behind him, waiting for a second figure.

‘Where’s Cas?’ Jack’s voice wavers.

‘He’s gone.’ Dean wonders at how level his voice is. He sounds gruff and angry, which he supposes is better than choked with useless emotion.

‘Gone? How?’ Sam stares at him, shaking his head as if he doesn’t believe him. ‘What happened?’

‘Billie. She trapped us, down in the basement. We had no way out, and Cas, he—’ Dean feels his chest contract and takes a long breath, jaw set. ‘He saved me. And now he’s gone. The Empty took him.’

‘He’s dead?’ Jack’s face crumples. ‘The deal he made, it must—’

‘You knew about this?’ Dean demands, startled. He feels a flicker of fear at the thought of having to talk about Castiel’s confession, which he has locked deep inside him, something that he can’t yet make sense of in words or feeling.

‘It was to save me.’ Jack says, frowning at his feet. ‘His life for mine, when…she said when he gave himself permission to be happy. That’s when she’d take him.’ He looks up, and Dean feels his gaze go straight through him. ‘But…why now-’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Dean cuts in, his heart jumping. ‘He’s gone. It took him, because of me. He said it would be forever.’ He hears his voice falter on the last word and grimaces

Sam is staring at him, trying to work it out. Dean isn’t sure he’s ready for when he does. ‘We’ll get him back.’ He promises finally, crossing over to grasp Dean’s shoulder tightly. ‘We always do, we always find a way.’

Dean nods, can do nothing else, but his heart sinks. He thinks of the awful certainty on Castiel’s face, the clarity in his words. _Maybe not this time._

-

It’s not until later that night, when the three of them have retreated into their rooms and Dean is drinking himself into oblivion on his bedroom floor, that Sam confronts him.

He knocks softly at the door, and Dean knows what is about to happen even before it does. He grunts in an affirming sort of way, knocking back another mouthful of whisky, and tries not to think about the last time that he drank from it; clinking glasses with Cas while he smiled warmly at him. His stomach twists again.

Sam edges cautiously around the door like an overgrown deer, his expression so nervous that it would be comical at any other time. ‘Dean? Can we-’ he pauses as he takes in the almost-empty bottle, and frowns disapprovingly. ‘Can we talk?’

Dean winces at the words but waves a hand to the chair in the corner; the one that Cas has sat in so many times as they went through their endless cycle of fighting and grudgingly apologising.

Sam walks towards it, then appears to think better of it and folds himself up on the floor beside Dean instead, face set in a rather determined way. Dean feels a sense of foreboding, but barely has time to prepare himself before Sam launches into it.

‘Dean, I- what happened with Cas earlier? Why did he give himself up like that?’

The sympathy in his face even before receiving an answer makes Dean grit his teeth. He’s most of the way through the bottle and still isn’t drunk enough for this shit. ‘I told you, it was to save me. It was the only way either of us would get out.’ He feels that age-old guilt and self-hatred creeping up in his chest and knows that he’ll have nightmares later that night.

‘But what was the deal? What did Jack mean about letting himself be happy?’ Sam probed, his face pinched in that annoying nosy-little-brother way. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

Dean bites back a retort about all the times that Sam has kept important information to himself, stamping down on the anger that is rearing its head in order to disguise how he’s actually feeling. ‘Look, I don’t wanna talk about it. I can’t do this right now.’ He takes another swig of drink, relishing the way it burns his throat on the way down, and hopes that Sam will leave.

He doesn’t. ‘He said something to you, didn’t he?’ he says, peering into Dean’s face. ‘Before he was taken. That’s what’s bothering you.’

‘Cas was taken _because of me,_ that’s what’s bothering me.’ Dean snaps at him, but he knows the truth is plastered over his face. He finds himself looking at the discarded jacket on his bed, at the corner of the red handprint still imprinted there. He swallows.

Sam follows his gaze and some sort of comprehension comes over his face, though there’s no way for him to have guessed all of it. ‘Look, you don’t have to tell me what it was, but… I know how special Cas is to you. How special you are to him. I know how much you must be hurting. You don’t have to pretend you aren’t.’

‘I’m fine. I just need to get him back.’ Dean finds himself saying, except instead of the firm statement that he intended his voice comes out embarrassingly plaintive, even wobbly. He goes to take another drink to cover up the slip, but Sam is already pulling him into a hug with one arm, patting his back comfortingly. Dean remembers doing the same thing whenever Sam had burst into tears when they were kids, and is slightly perturbed by the role reversal as his face is smushed into his brother’s shoulder.

‘We will.’ Sam says, with a confidence that Dean wishes he shared. ‘Cas always finds his way home.’ The _to you_ is left unsaid, but Dean feels it hit its mark all the same.

‘He, uh, he said-’ He stops. Somehow the admission had stumbled out by itself, made easier looking at the blankness of the wall behind them instead of into Sam’s face. Yet his whole body seems to fight against saying it, as if by saying it aloud, it will set the words loose into the world, making it real. Making it something that he has to confront. He closes his eyes, forces the words out. ‘He said he loved me, Sammy.’

Everything in him recoils at the statement, as if he has cut a part of himself open, but he sets his jaw. If Cas was able to say it so easily to his face, the very least he can do is acknowledge that it happened.

Sam doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Dean can sense him working through his words in his head. He feels oddly nervous, considering he hasn’t really admitted anything himself.

Eventually his brother pulls back to look at him, keeping one hand on his shoulder. ‘Wow.’ He doesn’t look nearly surprised enough. More like relieved, Dean thinks suspiciously. ‘Dean, that’s… how do you feel about it?’

Dean clams up immediately, not liking where this is going. ‘I dunno man, it’s _Cas,_ I—he just said it and it _took_ him and—well, it’s not like he hasn’t said it to us before-’

‘Not like this he hasn’t.’ Sam refutes him, with rather unjustified certainty for someone who wasn’t actually in the room at the time. ‘Wait, that means…’ He frowns, then understanding floods his face. ‘Permission to be happy, that’s what Jack said. And he let himself be happy by…’

Dean refuses to meet his eyes, but he can sense his brother’s face crumpling. ‘ _Dean.’_

‘Sounds about right.’ Dean says with false bravado, biting out anything that will stop him descending into panic again. ‘That l- caring about me is a one-way ticket to emptiness. Makes perfect fucking sense, actually. He never did learn.’

‘Dean, that’s … this was his _choice.’_ Sam’s voice is unexpectedly heated, and Dean looks up in surprise. ‘After everything we’ve been through with Chuck, don’t you see what this means? How important it is? Cas used his free will, out of love for you.’ Dean winces slightly at the words, spoken so casually. ‘Just like he always has, from the beginning.’

‘Well, he shouldn’t have.’ Dean doesn’t know why he sounds angry, again, when he just wants to curl up in the corner. ‘I’ve never asked him to. I’d rather be dead than keep having him—having anyone die for me.’

‘Dean…’ Sam’s face is full of pity, which only annoys him more. ‘You may not think that you’re worth that, but Cas does. He always has. I don’t think he’s ever believed anything more.’

‘Well, good for him. Now he’s dead—forever, apparently—and I didn’t get a choice in any of it. Didn’t even get a chance to say anything.’ He didn’t mean to let the last part slip out, but slams his mouth shut too late. He braces himself, takes another swig of whiskey.

Sam’s eyes brighten. ‘Well, what would you have said?’

There’s a long pause and Dean glares at him, having reached his emotional limit. ‘I’m gonna go to bed.’

His brother knows him well enough to know when he’s fighting a lost cause (sometimes), and clambers inelegantly to his feet, confiscating the rest of the whiskey bottle as he goes. He pauses at the door, face contemplative. ‘It might not feel like it right now, Dean, but you’re lucky. Lucky to be loved like that by someone.’ He smiled sadly. ‘We both are. Now we just need to fight to get them back.’

Dean feels a flash of guilt for having been too absorbed in his own grief to even ask his brother about Eileen. ‘I- Yeah. Yeah, we will, Sammy.’

‘Night, Dean.’

Dean listens to his soft footsteps down the hall and, despite himself, finds himself mulling over his brother’s words. He doesn’t think he’s often thought of himself as lucky before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter starts just after 15x19 and will carry on through the finale (because in this house we acknowledge some of the ten seasons of television that have taken place since Swan Song aired)

It’s over. Chuck is gone—and Jack with him in a way, to a place that they can’t follow. No more grand plans, or angels and demons following in their footsteps. Their lives are their own once more.

Dean had always thought that he would feel happier, when it happened.

He and Sam lean against the table in the bunker, a crate of beer sat between them. It’s quiet. Dean feels the adrenalin fading from his bones, the reality slowly washing over him. This—his brother and the bunker and their newly fixed world—is his life now. Forever, maybe.

‘I figured it would feel different.’ Sam says suddenly. ‘Being free.’

Dean shrugs. ‘Guess we aren’t used to it yet.’

‘I know, but—’ Sam sighs. ‘Dean, you know what I mean. This doesn't feel right.’

Dean can feel his eyes burning into the side of his face and looks away. He knows Sam had heard him afterwards, begging Jack to fix it all as he walked away, demanding why he couldn’t fix the Empty too. Had seen him behind the building after Jack disappeared without a word, his knuckles red where he’d punched the wall again and again, eyes hot with tears. He wonders if his brother can tell how hollow he feels, like his insides have been scooped out; if it’s obvious how he feels like their victory is something that happened to someone else.

‘He made his choice.’ He says, more sharply than he meant, not meaning a word of it.

Sam opens his mouth to argue, but his phone starts to buzz on the table beside them. He snatches it up and stares at the screen for a moment, lets out a relieved huff that seems to relax his entire body. 

Dean knows it will be Eileen without having to look. He had caught Sam texting her over and over on the way home, seen the grimace on his face. He nudges his brother’s shoulder. ‘Go on. You should go to her.’

Sam looks at him with sad eyes, full of the same pity that he’d turned on him days before. ‘Dean…’

‘ _Go.’_ Dean rolls his eyes and tries to loosen the tightness in his chest. ‘I’ll be fine. C’mon man, she wants to see you.’

His brother pulls a face, but he is turning back to the phone, unable to mask the delight in his face as he taps a reply. Whatever she responds with makes him bark a laugh and then he is away, a spring in his step as he heads into his room to grab his bag.

Dean slumps down into a chair at the table, takes another swig of beer. The bunker is quiet but for the usual soft creaking in the walls, a breath of wind outside the door. He looks at the place that has become their home, remembering; the spot where Kevin and Sam had played endless games of chess, where he and Sam had gotten to know their parents in all the wrong order, where Cas—

Cas is everywhere, from the plants that he’d started collecting on the sideboard to the worn chair where Dean has sometimes found him reading, his feet tucked up underneath him like a kid. He is there in the place on the floor where a different Dean, with the mark burning on his arm and the taste of blood in his mouth, had punched and kicked him to a pulp. Where he hadn’t fought back once, even when he lay broken on the ground; just wrapped his fingers around Dean’s wrist and pleaded with him not to leave.

Dean traces the place on the table where Cas’s name is scratched into the wood, lets the splinters catch at his fingers until they have broken the skin.

Sam appears in the doorway, bag slung over his shoulder, and Dean feels rather than sees the weight of his gaze. He sighs. ‘Sam, go.’

‘It’s not—I really don’t mind if-’

‘ _Sam._ I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Dean turns impatiently to him and his brother relents, his face set in worry. ‘Say hey to Eileen for me.’

‘I- Yeah. See you tomorrow.’

The door closes with a soft thump, leaving him sat in the silence of the bunker.

Dean rests his elbows on the table, steeples his hands beneath his chin and begins to pray to their new God.

-

Jack isn’t listening.

Dean paces the halls of the bunker in the middle of the night, wide awake, his body thrumming with useless energy. He stops in the doorway of Cas’s room, shaking off the odd feeling that he still shouldn’t pry, and perches on the edge of the bed. It has never been properly decorated, barely even houses any possessions really—he can’t tell if it’s a Cas thing or an angel thing—but there are more plants than he remembered sat around the window, their leaves browning at the tips. He tips a cup of water into them, starts messing about with the stack of paperbacks and notes that are scattered on the desk. The Zeppelin mixtape is partially buried, and he turns it over in his hands, feels his throat tighten again.

‘Why d’you have to do it?’ he finds himself demanding aloud as if Cas can still hear him, his voice thick. ‘Why d’you always have to _leave?’_

The bunker is too silent, and he feels it pressing in on him, like something stifling.

He sinks into the chair by the desk, feeling every loss that they have had to face this year like a physical weight on his shoulders. The papers in front of him rustle with the movement, escaping onto the floor, and he is reaching to scoop them back when one catches his eye. It’s a ripped page from a book, the paper soft and yellowed—which is the main reason it distracts him, really, because Castiel treats his novels like some sort of sacred texts, getting a grumpy look on his face when they are left dog-eared or cracked open at the spine. Dean lifts it towards him, peers at the text at the top identifying it as John Clare poem.

 _I loved thee, though I told thee not,_ _  
Right earlily and long,  
Thou wert my joy in every spot,  
My theme in every song_

He reads it again, and again, and again, the paper slowly creasing beneath his fingertips, and then suddenly he can’t anymore, because his vision has blurred. He angrily goes to scrub at his eyes then gives up and lets out a sob into his hands; a horrible, desperate sound in the relentless silence. He cries for Cas, who had opened his heart so many times and was at peace with receiving scraps in return. He cries for both of them, and the way that the world had conspired to keep them apart again and again; the way that it had done it forever. Most of all, he cries for himself, and the fact that, at the same time that he was convincing himself that he’d warped their relationship in his own head, Castiel was rooms away, staring at his greatest secret amid a collection of love poetry.

-

The days pass, and Dean sleeps constantly, feels less and less like dragging himself out of the darkness of his room. His dreams are fractured, memories reappearing and twisting in his head. Jack is often there; sometimes as an uncertain boy sat across the table from him, other times a godlike entity that stares at Dean through glowing eyes and throws him into nothingness. A few times his parents appear, eyes heavy with worry. Mostly he sees Cas; Cas consumed by souls, Cas standing in a lake, Cas murmuring _I’m dead to you_. Cas smiling softly at him until the Empty steals his face.

Dean spends hours going through the bunker’s books, until his eyes are red and a headache pulses around his temples. The Empty isn’t mentioned anywhere.

He can tell Sam is worried. He’s left a few times, visiting Eileen, but never for long. He keeps coming back with things; food and movies and stories, all presented with an over eagerness that makes Dean feel tired. One time, he comes back with a dog— _the_ dog, the one that Chuck had stolen away. Sam names him Miracle, and he immediately makes himself at home in Dean’s room, appearing at the foot of his bed each evening. Dean grumbles and complains until Sam goes to bed, then lets the dog curl up against his chest for the night, his ears tickling his chin.

Eventually, Dean suggests that they start hunting again. He kills a vampire and remembers how at home a knife feels in his hand. When they rescue a set of young children one day, returning them safely to the police, he feels a flicker of something in his chest that has been dormant for weeks.

He finds more and more cases for them, finds answers in police reports when he can’t in the bunker’s collection of lore.

It’s when they’re in a dusty corner of Ohio, cleaning their knives after ganking a pair of werewolves, that Sam comes out with it.

‘I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.’

Dean freezes, looks up to where his brother is refusing to meet his eyes. ‘What? What d’you mean?’

‘I—all of it, Dean. The hunting, the constantly being sure one of us is going to end up dead, losing everyone around us.’ Sam runs his hand through his hair agitatedly, leaving a splotch of blood on his forehead. ‘I want us to have actual lives.’

There’s a long pause where Dean tries not to show the fact that his stomach has dropped into his boots. ‘So, what. You’re just gonna leave? And go where?’ He realises as soon as he says it that he knows exactly where, that _of course_ Sam wants to leave. He wonders if he has talked to Eileen about it yet, how long he’s been trying to bring it up.

‘I’m not going to leave.’ Sam says quickly, frowning at him. ‘I never said that. But we’ve given _enough_ to this, Dean. Half of our lives, probably more. I want to decide what I do with the rest. See places, learn stuff. Have—maybe have a family, some day.’

Dean looks down at the knife that he is cleaning, nods without looking up. It’s the same opinion he’s voiced himself after all, on enough occasions. How could he ever begrudge Sam that? Not when he deserves it more than anyone. ‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.’ He forces a smile. ‘You’ve been waiting long enough.’

‘We fought so hard to be free.’ Sam says, looking at him as if he’s desperate for Dean to understand. ‘We lost so much, so many people. We get to be happy now.’

Dean looks around them, at the two corpses by their feet and the bag of weapons by the door and the smear of blood on Sam’s face. It isn’t a life that anyone would choose.

The problem is, Dean doesn’t know how to want anything else anymore. 

-

Eventually, he applies for a job. It’s Sam’s idea, of course—he finds an advert for a junior mechanic plastered to the garage down the road, two days a week.

‘It’ll get you out the bunker.’ Sam offers, ignoring Dean’s glare. ‘And the owner likes classic cars.’

It’s a done deal almost as soon as Dean pulls up in Baby, who is promptly bestowed with so much admiration by the garage owner that he almost starts feeling jealous.

So, he starts fixing cars at the start of each week, in between hunts. The tools feel just as comfortable in his hands as his gun, and he discovers that likes being constantly covered in oil instead of blood and dirt. He takes on extra hours, works long into the night, and sometimes the pain deep in his chest even goes away for a bit.

Life still feels like it’s on pause. He knows it’s been too long, that he’s getting nowhere. Sam is starting to look more and more resigned, stops bringing up Castiel in conversation.

But Dean can’t stop. His research is at the back of his every thought, swirls around his head before he goes to sleep. If he stops, he will be lost, and Castiel will be truly gone, and all of this will have been for nothing. Sometimes it feels like it’s all that’s holding him together. 

-

Over two months have passed by the time that Jack answers his prayers.

Dean is distracting himself by working on the Impala, back from a weekend visiting Jody. His mouth hurts from smiling for them all, he and Sam’s family, who know what’s wrong but don’t have the words to help.

He thinks of Sam and Eileen. His heart hurts from seeing the love in their eyes, their easy touches, the warmth in Sam’s voice that he hasn’t heard for so long. He watched Eileen’s face as they said goodbye, Sam climbing back into the car, and Dean hated himself.

Sam won’t leave, even though he wants to. He is ready for the life that he’s been putting on hold, ready to learn and love and live. But every time Dean asks him—pleads with him, shouts at him—he stubbornly denies it.

He won’t move on until Dean does, and Dean doesn’t know if he ever can.

He reaches under the car and suddenly feels the hair on his neck stand on end, a sudden feeling of _wrongness._ He’s met enough supernatural creatures to know what this means and springs to his feet, whirling round with a wrench in hand. Jack stands in front of him, smiling pleasantly, looking for all the world like he has dropped in for a chat.

‘Hello, Dean.’

Dean pretends not to notice how his chest constricts at the words, the tilt of his head, which reminds him so much of Cas that it hurts a little. ‘Jack. You finally back to remembering we exist?’ His voice is tight. Two whole months.

‘Sorry. I’ve been busy.’

He doesn’t expect the apology, especially said in such a meek _Jack_ -like way, and blinks. ‘I- have you been listening to me? What are you doing about Cas? Unless you’re too _busy_ to remember that he’s trapped down there.’

Jack lifts his chin. ‘I fixed the Empty some time ago, Dean.’

Dean feels like his insides have dropped out. ‘ _What?’_

‘Fixing the world is complicated. But Castiel is safe.’

‘You—’ Dean forgets who Jack is for a moment and advances on him, wrench in hand, his fists clenched. ‘You’re telling me Cas is alive, he’s free, and you just didn’t bother to tell me? What, me praying to—all the times I’ve spoken to you, that wasn’t enough?’

Jack gives him a long look. ‘Castiel had made peace with himself, when he chose to initiate that deal. I’ve found a way out for him, but he has a big decision to make.’

Dean doesn’t know what to do with this information. He desperately wants to sit down. ‘You have a way of getting Cas out. He’s still there? He’s still trapped?’

‘He’s perfectly comfortable, I made sure. But removing an angel from the Empty comes with a cost.’ He pauses. ‘It might help if you spoke to him yourself.’

Dean feels his heart flip in his chest, grits his teeth. ‘Just tell me what to do.’


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating, this chapter was a real struggle for some reason – I’ll try to post the next update sooner! Thank you so much to the lovely people who have left comments ♡

‘Let me get this straight,’ Dean says. ‘The only way to bring Cas back means him losing his grace?’

He has ended up supporting himself against the car, Jack’s arrival and his news proving far too much for his body on a couple hours of sleep. His mind whirls. Cas is _alive,_ although still trapped, and there’s a way to save him, and all of this has been for something. Except that it means ripping out Cas’s very being.

‘The only way to bring him back to earth.’ Jack corrects him. ‘The Empty is an endless sleep for angels and demons. If he willingly gives up his grace, he'll be freed as a human.’

Dean thinks of the fight that Castiel underwent to get his grace back before, the last time that he fell. The miserable few months that had been his experience of humanity, abandoned by his friends and turfed out without a roof over his head. He swallows. ‘And if he doesn’t?’

Jack looks rather sheepish, for the most powerful being in the universe. ‘I won’t leave Castiel in there. If he refuses to give up his grace, I will find him a place in Heaven. But I can’t let him back on earth as an angel.’

‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

‘Won’t.’ Jack admits. ‘I don’t want to world to become what it did before. Heaven, hell, earth, they all need rules to allow them to work, to stop them tearing each other apart. And that all starts with allowing angels to wreak havoc down here.’

‘It’s just one. _’_ Dean snaps. ‘Cas. And he isn’t going to _wreak havoc,_ he—well. He’ll be with us.’

‘I’m sorry Dean.’ To his credit, Jack looks as crestfallen as a God could. ‘I can’t make an exception, even for Cas. I’ve given him as much a choice as I can.’

Dean shakes his head. ‘It’s not fair. That isn’t a choice. I can’t ask him to give up his grace, not even for—for this.’

‘Then don’t ask him.’ Jack shrugs. ‘But, if you like, I can take you to him anyway. Give you a chance to say goodbye.’

Dean tries to work out what the look in his eyes is, wonders how much he knows about what happened in the moments before Castiel was taken. Presumably everything—he _is_ God now, after all. But the expression on Jack’s face is unreadable.

The offer barely warrants an answer, of course; his mind was made up before Jack had even spoken. ‘Do it.’ Dean says simply, and no sooner have the words left his mouth than his world disappears around him, and he is falling deep, deep into darkness.

-

The Empty is about what Dean has imagined: total, opaque nothingness, that seems to swallow them whole. He’s okay with the dark—has had to be—but the shapeless nature of this, where he can’t even see ground beneath his feet, sends shivers down the back of his neck. 

Jack is the only other thing that he can see, still stood next to him with one hand on his shoulder. He looks back at him, impassive. Dean thinks about the smile that used to come so easily to the kid’s face, how freely he had begun to show affection, and feels a pang in his chest.

He wants to ask Jack how he’s been, if he still thinks about them, if he misses the bunker. Instead, he clears his throat and says ‘So, how do we find him?’

Jack’s gaze fixes on something in the distance. When Dean squints in the same direction, he sees a spot of warm light, which he’s certain wasn’t there before. ‘It’s not far. But I think it’s best that you go alone.’

‘Right.’ Dean thinks briefly that Sam would almost certainly disapprove of this, which is exactly why he had decided not to tell him and let Jack whisk him away without so much as a note. ‘And you—'

‘I’ll wait here.’ Jack says firmly. ‘Good luck, Dean.’

‘Uh, thanks.’ He muses on that for a second, wondering exactly what for, before pushing it to the back of his mind. He takes off in the direction of the light, refusing to let himself look back at where Jack is standing, motionless.

Without anyone else beside him, the darkness becomes everything. It feels crushing, disorientating. Dean goes to reach for the knife in his pocket, then comes to the prompt conclusion that it probably isn’t going to work on anything here. If he’s honest, he thinks he’d rather the screams of hell or the bleak, colourless miles of purgatory to such total emptiness. It’s a grim destination for beings that are supposed to be immortal. He thinks about the fact that Cas has spent two entire months here alone, all because of him, and his stomach clenches.

He has no idea what to do when he finds him.

How can he possibly demand something more of _Cas,_ who has spent his entire time on earth sacrificing everything for other people? Who has lost his home and his powers and, on more than one count now, his life, all for Dean and Sam? If they really are finally free to take their own paths, Cas deserves to choose for himself; however limited his options. And the only place where that can lead, now, is heaven.

Dean thinks back to before the angels fell, when Cas was readying to return upstairs forever; tries to look past his own painful memories and remember the peace in his friend’s face, the resolution. Heaven, now that Jack has put things to right, is Cas’s home again: pure and peaceful and just, the way that he always wanted it to be. Even if—and Dean stands by this—every single one of his angelic siblings is a complete dick, Cas has only ever wanted to stand by them, to bring them together. Now the world has finally stopped destroying itself, he can.

Except, _I love you._ Except, _the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have._

The words thrum brokenly in his chest the same way that they had that night, as if they have a heartbeat all of their own. They still don’t feel real. He half expects to eventually find Cas and discover that he has no memory of the event, that Dean has crafted the entire thing in his head, from the tears in Cas’s eyes to the page of poetry in his room. It would make more sense than the way that Cas had peeled back Dean’s very soul in a few words, as if it were easy, or the way that his voice had trembled as he said the phrase that Dean hadn’t even dared let enter his most private thoughts. It would be a damn sight easier to believe than the idea of Cas thinking about the concept of love as something for himself, rather than a fascinating human oddity to tilt his head at until Sam and Dean roll their eyes at him.

The whole thing sits awkwardly in his memory, like a speech from a stranger. He doesn’t think this is how it’s supposed to feel; pain and fear and confusion, instead of the blissful happiness that had settled on Cas’s face. He ought to be grateful for such open, fearless honesty, but instead it terrifies him, makes him want to run until he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.

It’s just more proof that there is something deeply, irrevocably wrong with him. Something that no misplaced devotion can fix.

He feels himself starting to drown in the darkness and the silence and the pit of memories that is ever waiting at the back of his mind, and clenches his fists against his sides. He doesn’t have time for this, not when Cas’s future is on the line.

The light ahead of him is gradually growing into a definable shape, and he feels his pace pick up, half-running without even looking beneath his feet. He can see a room of some kind; a sort of parody of a room really, with only three walls, boxed in by the darkness like a kid’s dollhouse. As he gets closer, his steps falter.

It’s the bunker. Or, well, part of the bunker; the kitchen, specifically. He recognises the large table, the steel countertop. But he also doesn’t have time to think about any of it, because there’s a figure hunched over at the table, crumpled tan coat draped over his frame, hands spread over a book in front of him.

Dean takes in his familiar profile and messy hair and the slight curve of a smile on his face and feels his breath catch in his chest. He never thought he’d see any of it again.

‘ _Cas!’_ He finds himself shouting, the yawning empty darkness between them seeming to widen by the second. He’s running now, heart hammering.

Cas turns, brows drawn, and his eyes meet Dean’s. In all the fractured dreams that Dean has had about this moment, he has imagined Castiel’s slow smile, the happiness in his eyes as he goes to greet him, the sigh of relief. 

Instead, he is met with pure, abject horror.

The simultaneous realisation that _yep, Cas really did say those things_ and _wow, he has never looked less fucking pleased to see me_ hits Dean like a brick wall. He skids to a halt right at where the darkness turns into worn bunker flooring and feels the rush of adrenalin that has been pulsing through him since he arrived in the Empty flood to his head.

He has thought plenty about finding Cas alive and what he’d really meant and the decision that he was going to have to make and what Dean is meant to say about it. Less so about what Cas would think of him turning up out of nowhere, fresh out of answers on how to address their last interrupted conversation.

Fuck.

' _Dean?’_ The agitation in his voice makes it sound like Dean has sunk a knife into his chest, not called out his name. He jumps to his feet as if burned, eyes comically wide. His hands splay at his sides as if he isn’t sure what to do with them.

‘The one and only,’ Dean somehow manages, utilising a lifetime of repressing emotions in order to batter down the panic rising in his throat. He steps forward again, aching to reach out and reassure himself that Cas is real, but stops when Cas takes a step back instead.

‘You shouldn’t be here.’ Cas says frantically. ‘What did you do?’

‘ _Neither should you._ ’ Dean snaps; exasperated, despite himself. ‘Anyway, I didn’t _do_ anything. Jack gave me a lift.’

‘Jack?’ Cas’s face is a picture.

Dean ignores it and takes the opportunity to step forward and grab his shoulders, yanking him into a hug. He feels warm, and solid, and alive. After a moment, his arms tighten around Dean’s back, and he sighs into his shoulder.

‘Dean.’ He says again, this time in a much more normal, quiet Cas voice.

Dean feels a wash of relief at not being pushed away, grips him closer. ‘Thank God,’ he mutters absently, only catching the irony in his words a second later.

Now is the moment that they should—normally, would—pull apart, but neither of them moves. Cas is caught so tightly against his chest that when he lets out a breath, it is hot against the side of Dean’s neck. As if a switch has been flicked, the moment is suddenly irretrievably altered, and Dean becomes extremely aware of the way that their bodies are pressed against each other. He freezes, and they breathe together slowly, neither wanting to look each other in the face. Dean feels something melt away inside his chest from the feeling of his arms encircling Cas’s shoulders and desperately doesn’t want to move a second forward in time, when all of this will inevitably be ruined again.

‘Dean.’ Cas says again, and his voice is a low rumble this close to Dean’s ear, making him shiver. ‘I never… never expected to see you again, and had I known—that is, I don’t expect-’

Dean knows exactly what he’s trying to say and feels a hysterical sort of sob building in his chest, just like he had that first evening alone in the bunker, because he isn’t remotely ready to hear it, let alone respond. He panics, finds himself interrupting before his brain has even caught up with his mouth. ‘Cas, I know about the deal that Jack’s given you. To return to heaven.’

Cas goes very still and doesn’t speak for a moment. His hands loosen around Dean’s back and he steps away slightly, extricating himself from Dean’s arms. ‘Yes.’ He says, and the word is odd; stiff.

Dean made him sound like that, crushed the feeling out of his voice. He feels the same hollow sensation that he’s been living with for weeks; except this time, he has put it there himself. He’s a coward.

He barrels on, ignoring the way that Cas’s voice makes his stupid chest tighten, because if he stops now, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. ‘Or to come back to earth. As a human.’

‘Yes.’ Cas says again, robotically. He gestures to the kitchen, which is startlingly well reproduced, down to the dirty pots and pans. ‘The rest of the Empty is back in an eternal sleep. But Jack woke me up. He made this room for me.'

‘Yeah. He uh, he does shit like that now.’ Dean feels an unexpected flash of fondness for the fact that Jack and Cas’s dream space is the bunker’s kitchen, of all places, but it’s quickly buried by everything else. He wonders exactly what Cas’s reaction had been to Jack’s transformation, if he had had any idea of how things were going to go. ‘But Cas, I—you gotta know, we’ve been trying _everything_ to get you back, you never should have been here so long, and—'

‘I know.’ Cas cuts him off, not meeting his eyes. ‘Jack told me. And I’m grateful. But I’ve been fine. I just needed some time.’

Dean stares at him, feeling like he’s been punched, though he doesn’t really have a right to. ‘Did you…ask him not to tell us?’ He doesn’t get a reply, which is an answer in itself. ‘Cas, I thought you were _dead._ You _were_ dead. For two months. How much more time were you gonna take?’

The look on Cas’s face tells him _a hell of a lot longer._

Dean feels his frustration building, the same pain that he’d felt when he’d left Cas behind in purgatory, the first time. It’s unfair, but it’s easier to deal with than the storm of guilt that is pressing down on his chest, so he embraces it. ‘So, you’ve had a way out all along, while I’ve been—while we were grieving you. And instead of sharing that with us, you’ve been sat doing what, reading fucking _Great Expectations?’_ He looks at the book abandoned on the table.

‘ _David Copperfield.’_ Cas corrects him, making Dean grit his teeth. ‘I’m sorry, Dean. But this isn’t an easy decision for me.’

And that just knocks him flat, because it should be him apologising; not just for letting Cas pour his heart out and being too damn scared to respond, but for all the times he’s brushed him aside, used him, treated him like a weapon instead of a friend. He doesn’t understand why the things that chase around his head at night sink into a shameful ball in his stomach when he sees Cas face to face, why just looking at him seems to scramble his brain and sends his heartbeat off-kilter. He’s pushed him away, again, and because of him Cas is going to return to a place that has done nothing but hurt him, and the world will be like how it was for the last two months—except even worse, because Dean will have made it that way.

He stares frantically at Cas, feels the reluctant admission that is coming— _it was a difficult decision, but this is what’s best—_ and suddenly knows with absolute certainty that it can’t happen, that he couldn’t bear it. Not after everything they’ve been through. Cas deserves better than him, but he deserves more than what heaven can offer him, too. Dean wants to show Cas the best parts of being human, to wipe his last experience of it from his memory. Wants him to know what it’s like to have a real family, not whatever heaven told him he had.

He has no right to ask him to stay, to ask him to give up the most treasured part of himself for someone who can’t even acknowledge the truth between them, but when he tries to tell Cas that it’s his choice, the words turn to ash in his mouth. What comes out instead, the words jumbling over each other, is: ‘Don’t go.’

The corners of Cas’s mouth pull down. ‘Dean.’

‘Please.’ It’s downright selfish, and he hates himself, but he’s crowding forward to grab Cas’s arms, gripping so hard that he has folds of trench coat between his fingers. His heart is hammering in his chest. ‘Stay with us. Stay with me.’ Something desperate is crowding up inside of him, the sort of confession that he has only ever allowed himself to make when Cas wasn’t there to hear it. ‘I _need_ you.’

He’s said the words before, but Cas isn’t lost in his own head this time; he’s almost _too_ present, his eyes scanning wildly over Dean’s face, looking for an answer that Dean doesn’t know how to give.

‘Dean, the last time I was human…’ Cas shakes his head, and the hurt in his eyes is almost too much to look at. ‘I can’t do that again.’

Dean can feel the panic sliding up his throat, spreading coldly over his insides. ‘No. It won’t be like that, Cas. I promise. The bunker is your home. _We’re_ your home.’

‘Forever?’ Cas asks, and Dean knows he’s asking about more than just a place to live. Perhaps his happiness really was in _just saying it,_ but this is a lifetime, a sacrifice of a different kind. He needs something; deserves some kind of reassurance that Dean isn’t dragging him into a mortal life on earth where he will be alone, again. Dean knows this, and yet even after two months, it’s still too much; everything is tangled up inside him and he isn’t _ready._ He doesn’t know what this is yet, still doesn’t understand how his own desires can ever align with an angel’s.

Cas is watching him, his decision teetering on a knife point, and Dean forces himself to push it all aside, lets himself be guided by the fragile thing inside him that he’s tried so hard to bury. He lets go of Cas’s arms and shakily reaches up to his face; cups his hand around the edge of his jaw, his thumb almost brushing his bottom lip. Cas’s skin is warmer than he expects, and his eyes are huge, impossibly blue, pupils darkening. He looks almost scared, like he’s waiting for the jig to be up and all of this to vanish into smoke. 

Dean inches closer than he’s ever dared before, until Cas’s eyelashes are flickering inches from his own, and he feels the softness of his sudden exhale on his chin. His heart skips a few beats and he closes his eyes for a moment, breathless. Cas tilts forward ever so slightly so that their foreheads meet, and he feels something inside him break a little.

‘ _This_ is forever,’ he says, and the words come surprisingly easily, in the end. He thinks maybe he’s known it for a while, even if he hadn’t imagined in what form; that he and Cas are intertwined, branded into the depths of him along with the handprint on his shoulder. He swallows, slides his palm so it rests on Cas’s neck. ‘I just—I need some time, too.’ He pulls back ever so slightly so that he can look into Cas’s face and pleads for him to understand, tries to put everything that he doesn’t know how to say yet into his eyes.

Cas watches him and Dean knows he recognises it, like he always does, like he’s looking past Dean’s face and into whatever secrets he hides inside. Moments pass and Dean _sees_ the moment that he decides, watches the trust that shakily forms in his eyes. He understands.

The relief that rushes through him leaves him feeling like his strings have been cut, his knees trembling. 

‘Jack.’ Cas says quietly, not moving his eyes from Dean’s. ‘I’m ready.’


End file.
